£350,000 per week and not even picked. There is something rotting at Arsenal

Definitely. The game has enough fakery in it already.

Not even picked in a squad of 20 takes some doing.

Leno yet again.

Arteta needs to be brave in the new season. Get rid of the disinterested players who show up in pretense.

Doesn't give you any hope for the next 2/3 seasons that things will actually improve for this squad. Özil lingering on and Aubameyang and Saka likely to go. Backward steps

Starting with a disinterested owner would be better.

Yep

Thank you Bernard.

Too much space

0-3 called it.

The gulf between the teams is huge

Please remember City are 25 points behind Liverpool who have more than double our points

Congrats Ash.
Ditched sky a while ago, gave up trying to find a live stream, so have been listening on the radio. Well listening on and off really, it's very odd with no crowd noises. Bit unlucky losing Xhaka and Mari so early, Luiz having a disaster, and up against a class act of a team.
Football's back

Unlucky with the early injuries but we have been outplayed here by a better team. I suppose we would’ve expected that score for the original fixture so I can’t see we can argue. Well beaten.

Thank goodness that’s over. Truly dispiriting.

No passion, no fire in the team. They don’t seem to care enough.

Arteta needs backing to get rid of the deadwood and bring in better, or perhaps more committed, players.

Well that tells you all you need to know about our current level.
Three seasons on the run city have done the double on us.
Very very poor. Many players hardly had a touch.

5 subs suits city more than any other club because those 5 are very expensive top quality players. In fact it solves their huge squad problem and the Playing time issue for phil Foden. For us it means we just still get beaten 3-0 at City because one of those 5 unfortunately includes David Luiz.

What’s the actual maths of us getting Europa this year? Winning the FA cup apart - which I would make our no.1 aim.

People can talk all they like about replacing player A with player Z, selling player B and buying player Y, and dropping player C for player X. That’s fine, it’s what fans do. But I’m not sure it addresses the club’s biggest problem, which in my view is Kroenke’s ownership.

I don’t think anything we could have done would have changed the course of tonight’s result but to lose Mari and Xhaka was a big blow to us having any control in the game. Their more accurate longer passes to put more pressure on the city back 4 would have helped.
Hopefully the injuries aren’t serious because whether we think they’re right for us or not they seem to both form a important part of Arteta’s game plan

I don’t think it’s impossible for us to be doing much better under Kreonke, but player A for B is never that easy. Financially we’re not at the top table and we’re in such a rut anyway it’ll take several large rabbits out of several hats recruitment wise and Pépé already looks to be a medium sized turkey to me right now.

One would prefer a suitably sepulchral silence to nonsensical fake crowd sounds. Either way, not hearing the anguished, marrow chilling cries of the Arsenal supporters is surely a good thing.

No we heard the crunch of that poor young city defenders vertebrae instead. Schumacher batiston mark II.

We’re 9th. 1 point behind Tottenham and and 3 points off 7th. 7th is qualifying rounds for Europa isn’t it where you play nine hundred games in over the season? It seems far from impossible to me but would you even want that? Play the kids again I suppose?

I hope the five subs thing doesn't stick. I can't bear the mass substitution thing in rugby either. Awful.

Arteta said leaving Özil out of the 20 man squad was a tactical decision. Given we are allowed 9 subs that is pretty damning that Arteta couldn’t envisage any circumstance or part of the game where Özil would be of use. Got to get him to move on with the smallest financial hit for us as possible.

You look back at some of the decisions this club has made with contracts and transfers over the past 5 years and you’d find quite a list of calamity. None more so than this £350k a week contract.

Awful. I hope he's ok.

On an more pleasant note, congratulations on the new addition. Its great that you are able to spend so much time with the little fellow.

Getting him to move on may well involve paying up his contract, which at £350k a week is £18.2m a year. As financial hits go, I’m struggling to see a smaller one than that.

The thing is I’m suspicious Özil has lost interest in playing. I wondered that with the way his time with the German national team ended, and I’ve seen nothing since with him at Arsenal to make me think differently. I’d be very surprised if he was bothered about not being selected tonight. He’ll do enough to avoid fines by turning up for training, going on the pitch when selected to play (putting in anything other than minimal effort is another matter).

Hence my guess is he’s sitting out his contract to get his £18.2m over the next year. He’ll then be approaching his 33rd birthday. Perhaps he’ll retire, or possibly play in America for another year or two when he’ll get a good salary without having to do much. Sounds right up his street.

I was excited to see football return. A bit surreal seeing how its played with no fans. Not surprised at all by the result. David Mustafi..er..ah..David Luiz didn't seem to gel with in central defense with his partner.

We were unlikely to win the match anyway, a draw being a great result if we could have gotten one. The game seemed like a closed practice match in preseason. Interesting to see what the game is like when you take fans out of it.

I thought we were awful last night. Did Ederson even have to make a save?

I hope that Arteta is not one of those overhyped number twos because already in his short tenure I have been left scratching my head at some of the decision's he's made.

The three subs he made in the second half seemed somewhat underwhelming considering he had both Pépé and Martinelli on the bench.

Does Nketiah really deserve to be ahead of Martinelli in the starting line-up, especially with Aubameyang pushed out wide?. I think Nketiah is a bundle of energy with excellent movement but seems a way from being PL quality just yet. Perhaps Arteta feels if he give him enough starts he will rapidly develop in the way that Harry Kane did for example.

The two injuries were clearly a big hurdle to overcome but only three players really did themselves any kind of justice yesterday. Leno was brilliant, obviously, whilst Guendouzi and Mustafi did OK. The rest were mediocre at best.

I am not convinced by Pablo Mari either. He's a tall lad who is decent in the air and composed on the ball but seems to lack pace and agility to me.

I was thinking a loan for a year and we might pay 50% of his wages. We might struggle to find that so I do think you’re right that he just wants to sit and get paid for the last year of his deal.

Clearly arsenal weren’t thinking straight when they gave him that deal, I think it was purely down to Arsenal trying to prove we were a relevant big club still, we were about to lose Sanchez for free and could t face losing our other big star for free as well as we’d be seen as a laughing stock. The reality is no one was interested in Özil but plenty were interested in Sanchez. We should have sold Sanchez to City for the £60m they bid and let Özil go for free. Just think of the extra money we’d have now.

Watched some very short highlights so can't comment on the overall match but Luiz is a *%^@*** idiot and even at the end with 6 vs 2 we still couldn't defend.

Except it was 3-0.

I've not seen enough yet but as you say any defender, any player, without natural or genuine pace always concerns me. There will always be points in the game where no matter how good you are at everything else you can just get beaten too easily by the most one dimensional kick and run footballer.
Any really top defenders in the modern era who thrived without having pace either had a very good partnership with a pacey partner or were absolutely supreme with their positioning, or both!

It is something that has always held Xhaka back and is something that could easily hold Guendouzi back. Sometimes it isn't necessarily pace it is more mobility and acceleration to cover 10 yards quickly. I remember back in the 00-04 era that over 10 yards Ljungberg was one of the quickest at the club, but over 60 yards he was well down the order, he made that work for him as his game was those short bursts in to space beyond the strikers rather than Henry style galloping runs in to larger open space.

I agree, Rich.

I think a central midfield of Xhaka and Guendouzi is horribly one-paced and can get by-passed far too easily by opposition counter-attacks.

Agreed, we've been putting technical ability over pace and power in our transfer targets for too long. The balance has to be right, but pace and power are so important in the english league.

The other thing we've been doing for too long is the sticking plaster central defender, always looking for the cheap solution and praying it works, Luiz, Sokratis, Lichsteiner, Jenkinson and further back the likes of Silvestre and Squillachi. Sadly the one time we did go big with Mustafi he hasn't worked out - but he's still been our best defender under Arteta. I can only really think of Mustafi, Sokratis and Saliba when we've gone over £10m for a defender. We did it for a long time with GK but seem to have found a good one once we spent a bit more with Leno - the guy has kept our goals against column this year in double figures!

I thought a number of players were just disinterested. Luiz is at the head of this queue. Lacazette is another. Then there are the players who are not up to standard. Totally depressing. GG had sides who lacked skill but would run thru a brick wall for him and the skill. Arteta is struggling to get any buy in from many of the players.

I would add touches from Saka. But I think we get more value from his as a full back.

It was the desperate act of a man who was struggling to hold on to his job. Wenger